Taiwan Cinema Industry

ntroduction 

Taiwan cinema has developed from the time of the Japanese rule in the early 1900s. Taiwan became the first and a major Japanese colonial film market. The cinema has evolved through the years to produce more appealing movies with markets all over the world. Over these years the Taiwan movie industry has faced some challenges. Taiwan being a Japanese colony, had its first movies produced by Japanese and Taiwan provide a good market for the films. The cinema industry has faced a lot of challenges in the form of completion from other film producers. Chinese movies, known for their better entertainment quality, for example, provided strict competition, especially around the 1940s and 1950s. Great producers in the Taiwan cinema industry such as Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-Liang have risen to evoke popularity and they are known all over the globe. 

Taiwan cinema has convened many aspects of filmmaking and production. For instance, the use of a benshi - a narrator in silent films, was adopted by Taiwan cinema from Japanese movie makers. This way people could go to see movies in order to hear the narrator’s interpretation of the movie. Benshis could make a romance to appear like a comedy or a drama depending on their skills and style. 

The current Taiwan movies have been referred to as the second new wave films. These are the films from Taiwan since the 1990s. The major challenge facing the Taiwan film in the recent time is the competition from the Hollywood blockbusters. Currently, many locals are preferring the Chinese and the Western type of movies. Most of the Taiwan’s population has shown a great interest majorly to Hollywood films (Lee, 2012). 

Cape no. 7 directed by a prolific director became a huge box office breakthrough in 2008. The movie has by far, been the most vied by the locals in Taiwan. This is after the cinema industry had gone dormant for almost over a decade without interest from viewers – both domestic and international. 

I want to address the role of the urban films in recent changes of the domestic film industry, in which a rising trend of resituating the local culture through various genres, subject matters and film techniques leads to a rich industrial environment that Taiwan cinema had lacked for more than twenty years. First, I will talk about different approaches taken by local filmmakers to reconnect with the local audience and examine how the representation of the city has participated in this process. 

The process is complicated and slow. After the outburst in 2008 with the biggest box-office hit Cape No.7 (2008, dir. Wei Te-sheng, ARS Film Production) in Taiwan's film history, Cape No.7 brought even more tourists into its main set Hengchun. Hengchun is a small southern town which has already been tourists' long-term favorite due to its coastal landscape, tropical weather and the historical sites built during the Qing Dynasty. 

While recent scholarship paid attention substantially on Cape No.7's roots-seeking ideology, which is shown by the rural side of Taiwan, I will try to amend the gap by focusing on the neglected importance of urban themes in the revitalization of local consciousness in Taiwan cinema. I will do this by presenting a close reading of Orz Boyz (2008, dir. Yang Ya-Che, One Production Film). 

The film encompasses many video techniques, different neighborhoods in Taipei, and a narrative told completely from children's creative vision. Such unique angle has never been applied to modern cinema in Taiwan's cinema history. Orz Boyz brings out a new representational mode of Taipei that is not limited to the realist mode that has profoundly determined how Taipei looks in Hou, Yang and Tsai’s films. Orz Boyz’s creative interpretation of Taipei should be considered with other Taipei movies. These may include Parking (2008, dir. Chung Mong-hong, Cream Film Production), when Love Comes (2010, dir. Chang Tso-chi, Chang Tso-chi Film Studio) and Au Revoir Taipei (2010, dir. Arvin Chen, Atom Cinema). 

I will also address the affinity between the rising awareness of Taiwanese identity and this urban cinema, which are made mostly by new talents but remain a strong connection with the artistic tradition established by Hou, Yang and Tsai’s stylistic representation of Taipei. 

Following the statistics, local cinema took only 0.40% of domestic box office in 1999, and the percentage fell to 0.10% in 2001 when the popular movie was abandoned. The government became the most stable investor of art cinema, which sustains Taiwan's status on the map of world cinema. However, since the early 2000s, some younger film producers, either trained during the Taiwan New Cinema period as assistant directors/cinematographers or emerged from television background and started writing film scripts, began a small-scale but stably growing movement to present audience-friendly stories set in Taiwan. Though the yearly production numbers are still small, 2 more and more films seek to speak to a wider audience rather than focusing only on artistic achievements (Guo-Juin, 2011). 

The film producer's collective awareness of providing local films to the local audience took three directions, which in total demonstrate a drastic change in recognition of Taiwanese characteristics. The first course involves repackaging the paradigm of genre film with Taiwanese stars and settings, and since it was hard for film producers to attract funding in making modern movies, they began with the most cost-effective genre: romance. Examples include; Blue Gate, 

Crossing (2002, dir. Yee Chih- Yen, Arc Light), and Formula 17 (2004, dir. Chen Yin-Jung, Three Dots) put together the effects of a contemporary Japanese drama and a more hybrid visual style catering for young individuals. These young stars grew up watching music videos, commercials in a fast rhythm and television programs. Taipei is the main background in both movies and has rendered into an entirely new appearance. However, the new face of cinematic Taipei is a result of compromises. Blue Gate Crossing is part of Taiwanese production company Arc Light's "Three Cities." 

Project, is collaborated with the French Pyramid Productions as a transnational series to create a new direction for pan-Asian Chinese-language cinema. Arc Light is headed by the popular film critic and filmmaker Chiao Hsiung-ping. He is a long-term supporter of the Taiwan New Cinema. It is, thus, a company with an objective to make Chinese-language films for Euro-American art-house audiences, a platform that the Taiwan New Cinema excelled at. Unlike Hou, Yang and Tsai’s films, which are now considered as counterexamples to the more light-hearted route of “Three Cities," Blue Gate Crossing represents Taipei as a generic East Asian city "visually constructed for the maximum degree of extra-local translatability," as Fran Martin notes. 

Director Yee admits that the reason he chooses to use a telephoto lens to capture the cityscape is to "blur the undesired colors and shapes in the foreground and background." On the opposite side, Martin also points out how the local audience passionately analyzed this film from an emphasis on the local color of Taipei, despite the fact that director tries to eliminate undesired colors of Taipei. The domestic audience's "re-specifying activity" is, therefore, in Martin's opinion, no less important than the director's intention of minimizing local actors. Blue Gate Crossing provides a way for the representation of Taipei, which can, on the one hand, satisfy the local audience's yearning to see stories happening in places they can recognize, and build an unspecific and global cityscape for overseas viewers on the other. A similar strategy is applied by Formula 17, a flamboyant gay film taking place only in nightclubs, bars and other westernized locations in Taipei. 

The river, a movie produced in 1997 by Tsai Ming-Liang is a fantastic movie that starts off presenting a scene where a man and a woman meet in a two-way escalator. They look at each in desirable ways though the escalator takes then towards different directions. The woman, upon reaching the lower level, immediately turns and ascends back to where her old friend awaits. Tsai’s story telling ability is seen in many of the movies that he has produced or directed. He catches the attention of the audience in different calculated ways. 

Taiwan cinema enjoyed a great deal of prowess as a primary source of good films. Taiwan cinema industry produced a lot of good movies over the years - around early 20 th century. After the emergence of high and better quality videos from western countries and China, the prowess varnished as Taiwan movies could not compete favorably against these other films. There arose a fall in the production and selling of Taiwan films. Both the local and international markets were affected. This went on for a long time until a breakthrough came out by the movie known as Cape no.7. 

The release of the Cape no. 7 remarked the revival of the Taiwan movie industry. Cape no 7 set an all-time domestic record for Taiwan films viewed locally. The movie has won a number awards and is still adored ever since it was released in 2010. After the publication of the movie, Taiwan cinema has found a way to revive itself after almost ten years of downfall. In 2011 another movie was produced by the same director for Cape no. 7which became the second highest grossing Taiwanese domestic film of all times. Many other good movies have emerged from the Taiwan cinema since the breakthrough in 2010 (Hong, 2010). 

In the current few past years, lots of other good producers have emerged. In 2015, Yu Shan Chen, a female director released a movie entitled; our times (2015) which consequently became the highest-grossing domestic Taiwan film of the year. Other great directors have produced excellent pieces of work in recent times (Wang, 2012). 

Taiwan film producers and directors have found ways to keep up with the trending market requirements and changes. One way by which this is achieved is by blending the characters and settings of their movies. Taiwan cinema has come up with movies that feature actors from other regions of the world. Other movies have also had their settings partly in other countries. Expanding on diversity and creation of a larger geographical scale provides a movie with more viewers. Collaboration with companies from other nations such as France has also contributed significantly to the current flourish of the Taiwan cinema industry. Partnerships combine excellent actors from different countries to bring out great actions in films, which leave the audience with wonder. 

Conclusion 

As Davis concludes, these films apply an ambiguous marketing strategy, which makes them so unique. Taiwan cinema has produced numerous movies with unique settings and themes. Taiwan films are appreciated in most countries as they provide incredible storylines. Taiwan cinema has evolved over the years having been one of the oldest film producers since the early 1900s. Competition in the market due to better quality from Chinese films and improved westernized qualities from Europe and the US slowed down the production and prowess of the Taiwan cinema industry. Great producers in Taiwan cinema industry have been recognized over the years through their magnificent works. Taiwan film industry remains to be a bedrock of great movie production (Hong, 2011). 

References 

Hong, G. J. (2011). Taiwan cinema: a contested nation on screen . Springer. 

Hong, G. J. (2011). A Time to Live, a Time to Die: New Taiwan Cinema and Its Vicissitudes, 1982–1986. In Taiwan Cinema (pp. 107-137). Palgrave Macmillan US. 

Hong, G. J. (2011). Colonial Archives, Postcolonial Archaeology: Pre-1945 Taiwan and the Hybrid Texts of Cinema before Nation. In Taiwan Cinema (pp. 13-31). Palgrave Macmillan US. 

Hong, G. J. (2011). Cinema among Genres: An Unorthodox History of Taiwan’s Dialect Cinema, 1 

Hong, G. J. (2010). Historiography of absence: Taiwan cinema before New Cinema 1982. Journal of Chinese Cinemas , 4 (1), 5-14. 

Lee, D. M. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Taiwan Cinema . Scarecrow Press. 

Wang, L. (2012). Chinese Women's Cinema. A Companion to Chinese Cinema, A , 318-345. 

Guo-Juin, H. (2011). Taiwan Cinema: A Contested Nation on Screen.